Urban Loop

Ben Volkow is the CEO & Founder of Otonomo, an Israel based startup building the future of connected car data. Otonomo is building a platform to collect, cleanse, secure, and standardize OEM car data from over 18 million vehicles. Third party service providers then deliver innovative smart city, traffic, fleet management, and mapping services for other companies and customers. Internationally recognized by various industry groups along with OEM support from some of the world’s largest...

Curtis Rogers is the Co-Founder of Parkade, an app that helps tenants in the same building share and rent parking. Parkade helps put your unused parking spots to good use. As for visitors to your apartment or condo, Parkade helps make visiting seamless, with finding parking just an afterthought. In this conversation, we dive into… Residential parking and why it’s such an exciting space The growth of Parkade and the initial MVP Thoughts on how mobility and transportation is moving away from...

Khristian Gutierrez is the Chief Revenue Officer at Passport, a leader in payments in the city space. Passport provides the only end-to-end digital operating system for mobile parking payments, parking enforcement, digital permitting, and micro-mobility. Nearly a 1000 cities and universities across the US work with Passport to make parking as simple and delightful as possible. Most recently, Passport partnered with Google Maps to enable mobile payments directly from the maps app itself!...

Phil Beecher is the President and CEO of the Wi-SUN Alliance, a global alliance developing and promoting inter-operable Internet of Things wireless standards for smart city infrastructure.Phil and the Wi-SUN Alliance have pioneered the Smart Utility wireless network (IEEE 802.15.4g), bringing together the best of reliability, bandwidth, and latency to deliver a robust network paired with industry backing and a marketplace of third party components and compatible products. An early engineer...

Dr. Paul Van Buskirk is a legendary political figure from the city of Cohoes, NY responsible for founding the Cohoes Citizen Party in 1963 to defeat the Albany political machine, New York’s most corrupt machine. Today, he is the Founder and Chairman of Metro Forecasting Models, which helps several Southeastern US states predict population growth and movement, to accurately build infrastructure. His latest book, Big Mike, Uncle Dan and Me is available now, where he discusses his journey,...

Jessie Feller Hahn is the Executive Director of Meeting of the Minds, a global leadership network and knowledge sharing platform, comprising tens of thousands of leaders in the urban sustainability and technology space. Previously she worked on the Tri-State Region’s 4th Regional Plan through the Regional Planning Association, a historic planning organization from the times of Rockefeller and Robert Moses which was involved in projects like bringing the very first bus station to NYC. In this...

Chris Davis was most recently the VP of Smart Cities at CIMCON Lighting, who headed their expansion into building Smart City platforms. A recognized expert in Smart City technology deployments, Chris has traveled the world to speak at several international conferences. Furthermore, Chris has headed divisions at Schneider Electric and has mentored several early stage clean energy companies. In this conversation, we dive into… Why cities usually start Smart City projects with connected...

Marc Morial is the President and CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, serving over 300 communities and helping improve the lives of over 2 million people nationwide. Under his tenure, the organization built stronger roots through its vast economic and educational programs. Marc also served as the Mayor of New Orleans, from 1994-2002, helping reduce violent crime and police corruption by over 60%. Marc’s latest book, The Gumbo Coalition,...

Dr. Jennifer Clark is the Author of Uneven Innovation and a Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. As an expert in urban and regional economic development planning, she has taught at Cornell University and the Georgia Institute of Technology in addition to providing expert testimony before the US Congress and consulting on several committees for the Canadian, UK, and US governments. Her latest book, Uneven Innovation, details how the changing...

Amos Meiri is the CEO and Co-Founder of Colu. Popular across Israel, and soon to be coming to the US, this Tel-Aviv based startup enables the coordination of infrastructure to reduce chaos, drive engagement with local business, and incentivize positive behavior through the distribution of a unique City Coin that can be spent across the city. Featured on Forbes, Colu has helped bring communities and local businesses to the forefront of the conversations around Smart Cities, along with...

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is physician, epidemiologist, public health expert, progressive activist, and political commentator. Previously as the Health Commissioner for the City of Detroit, tasked with rebuilding the health system, Abdul oversaw one of the fastest municipal public health turnarounds in American history, making Detroit a national leader in public health and environmental justice. In 2018, he ran for Governor of Michigan on an unapologetically progressive platform, advocating for...

Andrew Watkins is the President and COO of Marketplace.city, a Chicago based startup building a marketplace to connect leading smart technology providers to governments, worldwide. What began with the question, “Why don't public sector buyers have a better way to discover and acquire technology solutions?" blossomed into a robust marketplace serving over 60 cities and hundreds of vendors. Marketplace.city has been recognized by The World Economic Forum, Governing Magazine, State Scoop, and...

Governor Martin O’Malley served as the 61st Governor of the State of Maryland and was a 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidate. During his tenure as governor, he introduced and drove a revolutionary style of leadership centered on data-based decision making through the use of Esri GIS (Geographic Information Systems) models. Under his leadership, Maryland had transformed from one of the poorest performing states to one of the strongest, recovering 100% of the jobs lost during the 2008...

Ellen Hwang is currently a Program Director at the Knight Foundation and was previously the Director of Smart City & Municipal Innovation for the City of Philadelphia, where she helped drive an initiative to lay out the City’s first ever Smart City roadmap. In this conversation, we dive into… Ellen’s journey, from her time at Temple University to the Knight Foundation today How SmartCityPHL, the first Smart City Roadmap for Philadelphia, came into existence and all the joys and challenges...

Kelly Kang was most recently the Program Manager at Techstars Detroit, the premier accelerator for helping founders build businesses across mobility, transportation, and city infrastructure. In this conversation, we dive into… Kelly’s journey and how she found herself in a mentorship role with Techstars Some of the most impactful mobility problems being tackled Strategies for startups to succeed in the mobility world As always, advice on how to learn more about and begin working in the smart...

Your favorite podcast is back! Season 2 of The Urban Loop returns this week, presented in partnership with Billion or Bust Media. This season is going to be filled with eye-opening interviews with city leaders, civic technologists, and leading urbanists. Beyond that, we're planning on bringing forth a variety of content, including a weekly news roundup and insightful deep-dives into pertinent Smart City related topics. As always, would love to hear your thoughts, comments, and ideas on our...

In Episode 10, the final for Season 1, I’m joined by Jordan Davis. Jordan is the Director of Smart Columbus where she leads the City and the Columbus Partnership in bringing together the right partners and kickstarting pilot programs that help the city advance towards the grand vision of a connected city. Smart Columbus was born out of the very first USDOT Smart City Challenge and the City has been leading the country by example in setting the right foot forward in the creation of a smart...

Nigel Jacob is the Co-Founder of the Office of New Urban Mechanics, a civic innovation incubator and R&D lab within the City of Boston. Nigel’s work is dedicated to making urban life better through human-centered design and innovative applications of technology. The Office works with universities, startups, and other city departments to design innovative ideas around education, transportation, housing, and city research. Nigel is currently a board member for organizations like Code for...

Janna Smith is the Transportation Technology Project Manager for the City of Los Angeles. Janna works at the crossroads of technology and policy, leading efforts around data sharing and Smart City pilot programs in implementing LADOT’s Transportation Technology Strategy. In this conversation, we dive into… How LA is betting on Data, Mobility, and Infrastructure as a service Best practices surrounding on collecting and maintaining transportation data How to best separate the signal from the...

Danielle DuMerer is the CIO & Commisioner of the City of Chicago, where she helps the City leverage data and technology to improve city service delivery and oversees the implementation of large-scale smart city initiatives. In this conversation, Danielle gives us insight into... Improving the efficacy and accessibility of gov’t services How Chicago operates their incredible Open Data platform and collaborates with the city’s active civic tech community, in the form of Chi Hack Night and the...